We need sociological studies about the Net and computers.Universities have got to focus their attention on computers and the Internet. There are far too many understudied phenomena bubbling on the Net, and it's time for academia to wake up. Valuable time is being wasted.
Since the appearance of the desktop computer, very little academic analysis has been done on it and how people use it. Yes, there are a ton of surveys done to show that people use computers for e-mail and entertainment. These are usually done on behalf of advertisers looking for an edge. They are not helping us understand the overnight successes of experimental mechanisms.
We need real sociological research done by people who can handle it objectively, so we don't have to listen to the carping BSers blathering on about Web 2.0 or how folksonomies are so important to users and the future. That stuff is all made up and based on speculation and invention.
Take MySpace.com (please!). Nobody I know of, for example, predicted or even really saw the explosion of that system as a primary source of ersatz blogs and community interaction. I personally see it as Live Journal 2.0, since it seems to have all the elements of that system (also a remarkable phenomenon) with the addition of a musical element and a slightly different demographic. That said, visiting MySpace for the first time is somewhat reminiscent of visiting Tijuana for the first time. The place is rough-edged and wild. It seems unsafe.
More interesting is that it has a game-like novelty, as communities within communities form and dissolve like one of those online games where you get to roam around a virtual world and talk to other players. People use MySpace as a meeting ground, one that often transfers to real life in new modern ways not understood by anyone over 30.—Continue reading...
When I was young we had this concept that you should never trust anyone over 30. Nowadays the new social mechanisms employed by teens and 20-somethings are so unfathomable to anyone over 30 that it's not a matter of not trusting anyone over 30 anymore. Anyone over 30 is excuded by default.
The mechanisms for interaction among teens today are amazing. An example took place in the upscale Berkeley Hills neighborhood recently. Some teenage girl whose parents were out of town decided to throw a small party for her pals while Mom and Dad were away. She did nothing to limit the attendance, thinking the more the merrier. Kids seem to know that there is a viral component to their communications links but do not fully understand the power of it. So her friends used their phones to message other friends about the party, and they in turn messaged others. It's believed that word of the party then got on to MySpace.
In no time there was a packed house of unsupervised teens from two or three local high schools. A number of fights then broke out. People were stabbed and one kid was dead. Everyone scattered after the fatal stabbing. I'm sure the girl is grounded for life. Can you imagine?
This is the power of the new networking and the new ways of communication. Which person over 30 even uses the phone text-messaging? How many have ever visited MySpace or LiveJournal? Parents could do worse than get on those systems and track down their children and their children's friends to see what they're up to. It's a valuable resource, let me tell you.
If adults could penetrate the online chat network, I'm certain all the details of the stabbing episode could be unraveled. Ironically, the blog search engines reject the blogs within the MySpace and Live Journal systems, so they're mostly unexplored, like a jungle in Borneo. This is despite the fact that there are more people doing online diaries and "blogging" on Live Journal and MySpace (over 50 million) than in all the rest of bloggerdom combined, worldwide.
It's as if nobody wants to admit that they're posting to these sites because they're populated by a bunch of kids who are not too serious about what they are doing. They may not be serious, but they seem to be online a lot, doing something. The ignorance of this situation is made all the worse by the fact that academia, which should be studying these phenomena, is just as out of the loop as anyone else over 30. Then everyone is shocked when some new and weird fad appears—out of the blue. I don't think this disconnect is such a good idea.
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